Wednesday, June 17, 2009

The retribution

CK had come up the hard way in life. He had no advantage of a good lineage, affluent circumstances or good education. His early life was not something that one would like to dwell upon in conversations with others. He had been charged for offences under many sections of Indian Penal Code and even served short terms on a few occasions. He realized that this would not take him far. He knew where the big money was for people with no special skills. He changed his name and shifted to another town with a new identity. He joined a political party and soon found life to be one of comfort and luxury. He was a man of few words and could not become a public speaker. But he had other skills to fall back upon. He did not marry as he thought it fettered free movement and constrained one with many commitments. He was not an ethical person and was friendly in every town with some woman or the other. Life was smooth.

The top leaders needed his help frequently. They knew him as CK and his usefulness on occasions. They took care not to talk to him directly or meet him personally. Grateful as they were in their own way, they rewarded him amply whenever he accomplished the jobs assigned to him with clinical perfection. He called himself a trouble shooter though people who used him knew him differently. That is how he came to be called as CK in close circles. He would only receive instructions through cell phones saying that Mr. X is bothering the leader too much even though the leader went out of the way to pacify that Mr. X with pelf and positions. The leader was disgusted and would like CK to do something about it.CK is a man of compassion. He always provided chances for the person initially with verbal threats failing which some mild bodily attack in unexpected place and circumstance. He may sometimes retain a child of his target for a couple of days and let the child free later without any harm. Alternatively he may be compelled to take the target’s wife or daughter for a day’s outing, some embarrassing photo sessions and mostly ensure their safe return. If all these things failed to make the person see reason and comply with the wishes of the leader, he would most reluctantly contrive a denouement that media reported as death as due to an accidental fall or a suicide out of depression or a gruesome auto accident. The police, the sniffer dogs and the special investigative teams after a few wrong leads would invariably lose interest in such cases in due course.

This was working well for CK and there was not much to do for him for many days. But the latest one that CK executed, particularly well as he thought,, was botched up by a side kick of his and left a big trail towards him as clearly as the slime of a snail. He was not aware of this till the authorities alerted the leader. The media made big noise and police had to demonstrate some action. They were on the look out for him everywhere. It was then there was one call on CK’s cell phone full of filthy abuse and asking him to be present at a particular lonely place for being smuggled out in a police van to some safe haven till the uproar subsided. Till the police van picked him up, he was confident and unafraid as he knew all the past secrets of the leader. Once in the van, the men in stolen vehicle and stolen uniform jabbed a cotton swab on his nose. There was a news item next day in the corner of a page in dailies that the body of an unidentified man aged about thirty five was found in the outskirts of the city. The police were striving to ascertain the identity of the man and the cause of his death. The sniffer dogs put to use ran for some distance and lost track of the culprit(s).Elsewhere the leader breathed a sigh of relief at the new find of another efficient CK.